Bedside device emits light that helps you fall asleep and wake up. Includes white noise and wake-up sounds. Tracks REM, light, and deep sleep. Easy to set up. App consolidates all your Withings data. Alarm clock can be set for a window. Stylish.

Cons

Expensive. No options (at this time) for sleep and wakeup music. Sensor might pick up additional motion after you wake up. Need two sensors to track the sleep of two people in one bed. iOS required.

Bottom Line

Instead of simply monitoring your sleep, the Withings Aura helps you fall asleep and wake up with ambient noise, a smart alarm clock, and different colored lights. The steep price tag might convince you to wait until Withings perfects it, though. It's not quite there yet.

Monitoring your sleep is one thing, but actively improving your time in bed is a whole other ballgame. Plenty of activity trackers and sleep systems track how quickly you fall asleep, when you roll over in the night, and how many hours you sleep, but they leave it to you to make changes that will help you get to sleep quicker and wake up feeling more refreshed. Withings Aura, a new sleep system, makes decent inroads at changing that setup. Instead of simply monitoring your sleep, Withings Aura ($299.95) helps you fall asleep with white noise and a narrow red light spectrum that's emitted at you while you're dozing off. When it's time to wake up, Aura looks for the ideal time in a window that you set for your alarm, and slowly projects different light and sounds to ease you out of slumber.

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Because the Aura is made by Withings, you can put other health and wellness metrics you're tracking with the company's products—such as the Withings Pulse O2, Smart Body Analyzer, and Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor—right alongside your sleep data. In fact, the Healthmate mobile app used with the Aura even includes the ability to take your pulse, which it does through your smartphone's camera.

The Withings Aura sleep system is an impressive and interesting piece of technology, but it's expensive and ripe for further innovation. My favorite parts about it are the white noise and contextual colored lights, and $299 is a lot of money to pay for those two features. The sleep monitor itself, which slides under your mattress and plugs into an outlet, could use a few improvements, perhaps even managed through the mobile app. Oh, and the Aura only supports iOS for now. Bummer.

Design and SetupWithings Aura comprises three parts: a Sleep Sensor that goes under your mattress, a bedside device, and the Healthmate mobile app.

I love the bedside device, which has a modern and somewhat futuristic look to it, sleek and white. It looks like an oversized, domed salt cellar, measuring 11.3 by 5 inches by 5.3 (HWD) with a curved top. The bedside device is the component that emits light and has an audio player and clock in it.

When you're falling asleep, the device emits a narrow red light spectrum, which doesn't have any Melatonin-inhibiting wavelengths that keep you awake. Conversely, when you're waking up, it emits a narrow blue light spectrum, which does have Melatonin-inhibiting wavelengths that raise your alertness. The red light actually starts out orange and progressively becomes a deeper shade of red, until it eventually turns off, which takes about 15 minutes.

It plays music, too, the white noise of the ocean when you're falling asleep and a melodic tone when you wake up. If you take too long to wake up, the tone starts to take on some drum-and-bass qualities, but it's a slow progression.

You can adjust the brightness of the light from the app or by swiping your hand up and down its side. A tap on the top of the bedside device turns a colorless reading light on and off. A long press stops the sleep/wake program.

What you can't tell from pictures is that there is no glass. The area that emits light is an open concave area. It also has a clock on the front. If you look at it straight on or from above when the light is on, it's bright enough to hurt. When you're lying in bed, however, the glow is just right.

The bedside device has a few connection points on the back, including one for the Sleep Sensor. In other words, the two pieces are connected by a wire. That might sound old-fashioned in this age of Bluetooth, but the reason is to reduce the amount of electromagnetic airwaves around you while you sleep. The wire is finished with a fabric that supposedly creates an airwave-free connection, too.

There are two additional USB outlets on the back, so you can plug in your phone(s) as well, and when you do, Withings automatically shuts off the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals. Smart in theory, but in practice, when I plugged in, both signals still appeared to be on, according to my phone.

The Sleep SensorThe Sleep Sensor that sits under your mattress measures 27.6 inches long and 8.3 inches wide. Because it's under the mattress, not under your sheets, and it's only 0.6 inches thick, you can't feel it at all.

On my bed, I had some minor trouble with the mattress sensor. First, I use a thin foam mattress, which nestles into my bed frame. The Aura's sensor is designed to be able to hang off the edge of the bed. That's not possible in my case because the bed frame comes up around the mattress. It took a little finagling to make it work. Second, the sensor stretches about halfway across my queen-sized bed, so it can be under one person, but not both. Withings says it will make a second sensor available for purchase to track two people in one bed.

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About the Author

Jill Duffy is a contributing editor, specializing in productivity apps and software, as well as technologies for health and fitness. She writes the weekly Get Organized column, with tips on how to lead a better digital life. Her first book, Get Organized: How to Clean Up Your Messy Digital Life is available for Kindle, iPad, and other digital forma... See Full Bio

Withings Aura

Withings Aura

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